December 26th’s update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 27th’s update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 28th’s update is here on the site and here in the comments.
December 30th’s update is here on the site and here in the comments.
Going out with friends today and tomorrow! Next week and onwards things should return to normal and we can continue drudging through in the second year of this war.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are fairly brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. The Duran, of which he co-hosts, is where the chuddery really begins to spill out.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ Gleb Bazov, banned from Twitter, referenced pretty heavily in what remains of pro-Russian Twitter.
https://t.me/asbmil ~ Now rebranded as Battlefield Insights, they do infrequent posts on the conflict.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/riafan_everywhere ~ Think it’s a government news org or Federal News Agency? Russian language.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Front news coverage. Russian langauge.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of the really big pro-Russian (except when they’re being pessismistic, which is often) telegram channels focussing on the war. Russian language.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Any Western media outlet that is even vaguely liberal (and quite a few conservative ones too).
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week’s discussion post.
my favorite source says peace is coming:
Putin explicitly sees Merkel saying “Yeah, we only made peace to buy time for Ukraine to rearm, that was the whole point of it” and then sees America, running out of weapons to send Ukraine, going “Yo, wanna make a peace deal?” Putin’s a fairly merciful dude compared to many other Russian hardliners but I can’t imagine even him being that naive.
Especially considering that WaPo or NYT or whatever piece a month or two ago that was like “Blinken is going to tell Zelensky to pretend to be open for peace just so Ukraine’s European allies feel better about supporting the war; don’t worry guys, Ukraine isn’t actually going to make peace” This just feels like an extension of that.
I do think it’s very plausible that America is trying to find a way to exit this war now that their main goal has been achieved (steal Europe’s industry, keep Germany down and Russia out, destroy all of Europe’s old equipment and force them to buy their shitty overpriced planes to keep US’s MIC full of cash) and they wanna pivot ASAP to China but if Putin lets them do that then that’s a major diplomatic failure on his behalf even if America says that he can keep the entire territory of all four oblasts. He’s got Biden caught in his jaws and he shouldn’t let go.
So my tentative conclusion is that America is beginning to freak out about what this war has done and is doing to the geopolitical situation around the world and wants out while they still have some winnings to take home, and also sees the upcoming Russian winter and spring offensives, and is trying to negotiate. And I think it would be idiotic to the point of harming his entire position for Putin to negotiate now, when the Russian army is literally gearing up to take the remaining territory they want over the next year, unless the terms are amazing (like, they also get Odessa and Mykolaiv and some kind of solid security guarantees that Ukraine will never join NATO and no more military equipment can be sent there). Not only that, but Putin now has a very plausible reason to explain to his allies why he isn’t negotiating now that Merkel fucked up and said what she said.
